61–70 of 311 posts
We need complete ICBM disarmament. They can keep their bombs and we can keep ours (for now), but we should restrict delivery systems such that there is a built in lag (bombers taking many minutes or hours to reach their targets), and can be recalled. ICBM's can be launched in a moment, and it is impossible to recall them or disable them once they are underway.
It is believed that the incident may be connected to asteroid 2012 DA14, which measures 45 to 95 meters in diameter and will be passing by Earth tonight at around 19:25 GMT at the record close range of 27,000 kilometers. apparently there was a risk that asteroid would intercept a satellite orbit. Too early to say, but it seems more likely than mere coincidence.
Phil Plait (Slate's Bad Astronomer) doesn't think they're related: https://twitter.com/BadAstronomer Note especially: 12 hours is a long way at 8 km/sec, so this object in Ruissia was on a very different orbit than 2012 DA14. and also: Also, apparently moving east-to-west tho I can’t say for sure. Anything on the orbit of DA14 would be moving south-to-north. Obviously info is still pretty thin, and this article seems…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A meteorite would be hypersonic when first entering the atomsphere and then supersonic the rest of the way until maybe a few hundred meters before impact. Besides that, if it's not a solid iron-nickle meteorite, it may even breakup or explode well above the surface instead of staying intact. It's not quite like taking out a satellite in low Earth orbit in that there's plenty of information on its orbit, trajectory, t…
I don't know about "taking it out" per se but an air defense system designed to hit ballistic missiles in the terminal phase could also hit an inbound meteorite. It is within the performance envelope of those types of systems. That said, against a meteorite it won't do much good since it is an inert mass. It is plausible that the Russians launched an interceptor just to be safe. If it is a meteor, it neither hurts no…
Here's a collection of insane videos of the event, some with the enormous sonic boom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIAm5hq8WWc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0cRHsApzt8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np_mpGYSBSA Can anyone translate what they are saying in the first one? You can get a good idea of the new videos being posted using YouTube's "last hour" filter: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%D0%BC%D0%…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJOJ6B2XOyA
The guy doesn't even say anything for a long while, just starts speeding up.
edit: Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy (Slate) think it's unrelated to the 2012DA14 asteroid, because of the timing gap and incorrect direction of travel. http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/02/15/breaking... This could have turned out very badly if the thing had hit the ground...could we have caught this one, and why didn't we?
The air defense stuff is somewhat hard to believe, we don't intercept de-orbiting space junk, much less less hypersonic meteors. Further every missile interceptor that is publicly disclosed (which includes the US attempts at an exo-atmospheric interceptor) have boost stages that generate a lot of vapor, there is no rising vapor trail in any of the videos of a ground based interceptor.
Finally there is the magnitude of the flash. Given the lack of sparkles on the video I don't believe what ever exploded was nuclear but on the videos with timers watching the flash and timing the 'boom' correlates with the 20 - 25 km (80,000') in altitude. One hopes it wasn't a surveillance aircraft that was destroyed. I'm sure if it was we'll hear about that in the morning.
Definitely a mystery.
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/across-the-universe/2013/f...
I can't get over how long it takes for the sonic boom to hit. This video has the meteorite trail on camera for 27 seconds before you hear the boom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np_mpGYSBSA How fast does something have to be travelling to build up a delay like that?
The speed had more to do with the magnitude of the boom itself.
>According to unconfirmed reports, the meteorite was intercepted by an air defense unit Anyone else catch this? Is this just a bad translation and they mean to say that an air defense unit tracked the meteorite on radar? I wouldn't think any air defense system would be capable of actually intercepting a meteorite, but perhaps I'm wrong. Still doesn't seem like anything intercepted it from the videos.
The next sentence follows with: A missile salvo reportedly blew the meteorite to pieces at an altitude of 20 kilometers.
That is an amazing event. I am not sure I buy the meteorite story. Has anyone checked on 2012-DA14 [1] the asteroid that was supposed to cross between the earth and geosync orbit this evening? One conjecture would be it knocked something out of orbit. The air defense stuff is somewhat hard to believe, we don't intercept de-orbiting space junk, much less less hypersonic meteors. Further every missile interceptor that…
Here's a collection of insane videos of the event, some with the enormous sonic boom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIAm5hq8WWc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0cRHsApzt8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np_mpGYSBSA Can anyone translate what they are saying in the first one? You can get a good idea of the new videos being posted using YouTube's "last hour" filter: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%D0%BC%D0%…
In the first video, it's mostly "WTF" and "we are being bombed", or "military testing" - in the beginning ... followed by a more scientific discussion, about it being a meteorite breaking up etc